Explore "Discourses on Livy" by Niccolò Machiavelli on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
That the multitude is helpless without a head: and that we should not with the same breath threaten and ask leave.
When Virginia died by her father's hand, the commons of Rome withdrew under arms to the Sacred Hill. Whereupon the senate sent messengers to demand by what sanction they had deserted their commanders and assembled there in arms. And in such reverence was the authority of the senate held, that the commons, lacking leaders, durst make no reply. "Not," says Titus Livius, "that they were at a loss what to answer, but because they had none to answer for them; " words which clearly show how helpless a thing is the multitude when without a head.